by Vicki Tharp
Images of my boyfriend in Iraq came tumbling back, the love, the betrayal, the pleasure and the pain. “Not in a million years,” I stated unequivocally.
The way he smiled with his gaze turned inward made me wonder. “What about you?”
“Double that time and then maybe we’ll be getting close,” he said with a wry grin.
“What about Jenna?”
The smile slipped from his face. “Our relationship is…complicated.”
He reached out and painted my side with the antibiotic cream with gentle, deft strokes. His eyelid twitched. He probably wanted to throttle me for bringing Jenna into the conversation.
There was something between them. A familiarity, an intimacy I couldn’t put my finger on. It was none of my business, so I folded my arms on the table and buried my head to hide my grimace of pain. The minor wound stung like I’d gone a couple bad rounds with a mad chef’s cheese grater.
“Any news on Dink?” I asked.
Hank taped the last of the non-stick gauze squares over the angry, raw skin. “Dale called from the animal hospital while I was eating. The vets took Dink into surgery. The bone was so pulverized they had to put a plate on it. But barring any major infections or other complications, they expect him to recover, though he may be left with a limp.”
“He seems like a fighter. He’ll bounce back in no time, I’m sure.”
“Like you?” Hank asked.
He bobbed his chin toward my injured shoulder as he stood and moved behind me. He traced the pad of a finger over the ridges of scar tissue and into the dip in my shoulder muscle where the bullet had exited. His skin was warm on mine. Though his touch was platonic, I couldn’t remember the last time someone touched me—other than the casual touch when shaking hands or exchanging money with the person behind the register—and I didn’t shrink from it.
“No, not like me.” I glanced at him over my shoulder. His hair was matted in a ring around his head from wearing his hat all day and stubble shadowed his jawline. I shoved the lock back on the haunting memories of the day I’d been shot before they could escape and wreak their usual havoc. I kept my voice down because I didn’t trust it not to crack. “I prefer to avoid a fight whenever I can.”
“I know enough to recognize an entrance wound from an exit wound. From all appearances, you were running toward the fight, not from it.” His expression hardened and I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or mortified. He pressed his thumb on the outside of the divot and began working the muscle beneath the scar tissue.
He was correct, so I didn’t say anything at all. Instead, I stifled a groan equal parts pain and pleasure and tried to concentrate on the tug and pull of his fingers as he worked his magic on my knotted muscles. I dozed with my head on the table.
When Hank finished, he draped one of my T-shirts over my bare shoulders. Goose bumps covered my body and I convinced myself it was because the cabin had grown colder and that they had absolutely nothing to do with the feel of his warm, calloused hands on my skin.
I pulled the shirt on over my head and accepted a hot mug of coffee and the anti-inflammatory tablets he’d placed in front of me. “Thanks.”
“Better?” He stepped back to the coffee pot to retrieve his own mug.
I nodded. “How did you know my shoulder was bothering me?”
He stood hip-shot against the kitchen counter with the majority of his weight on his good leg. He rubbed a hand down the quads of his injured one. “I’ve had a little experience with damaged muscles. Mostly it’s a dull ache. I try to ignore it. Then sometimes I cramp for no reason and it brings me to my knees.”
“What happened?”
“I got old and slow,” he said, flashing a self-deprecating grin. “I was at the rodeo finals in Vegas. Came off a bull. The Machine, they called him, because he methodically dumped all his riders before time was up. I made the eight seconds. Then he slammed me into the ground, rammed a horn through my thigh, then stomped on my ribs as a departing ‘fuck you.’”
“Ouch.”
He chuckled, his laughter warm and deep. “You could say that.”
“Is that why you’re here and not still on the circuit?”
“More or less,” he allowed as the smile slipped from his lips.
Silence fell between us. I waited for him to elaborate. He sipped his coffee and regarded me over the brim of his cup, content to let the subject drop. Holding his gaze, I wondered which one of us had the most secrets. Mine relentlessly gnawed at my soul, each day erasing a part of me, leaving me feeling more smudged—a faint outline of the person I once was.
Hank’s eyes narrowed as if he was trying to understand, as if he could read my mind. I knew he couldn’t, but I looked away.
There came a hollow thunk of boots on the front porch a second before a knock sounded. Hank straightened as I stood, but despite his bad leg, he still beat me to the door.
A cold wind threw a handful of last fall’s leaves into the cabin as Dale strode in, a rifle with scabbard in each hand. He deposited the weapons on the table then unloaded four boxes of ammo from the pockets of his thick work coat.
He eyed me pointedly, then dropped his hat on the table and waved me to one of the chairs. Hank handed Dale a cup of coffee, his limp more prominent as he stepped back to the counter and leaned against it.
Even as an outsider, I knew a rancher’s life wasn’t all frolicking foals and fragrant flowers but the exhaustion on Dale’s face went beyond the fatigue of a long, hard day. Strain and worry creased his face more than age and sun accounted for.
This I understood.
After a year in Iraq, the daily stress of wondering if this was going to be the day that your buddy died or you died stamped that look on most everyone.
“You’d better be a damn sight better with a rifle than you are at riding a horse,” Dale said, tearing a small piece out of my hide.
I swallowed a sticky ball of saliva. “I am, sir.”
I was no stranger to a dressing down. I deserved it. He had every right to be angry, to dismiss me. After all, I’d lied about my job qualifications. I’d never been fired before, and I wasn’t in any hurry to start today. “About the riding—”
“I’ll make sure she gets up to speed.” Hank crossed his arms over his chest, coffee cup still in hand. His expression was flat, devoid of any excitement at the prospect, but he raised a single dirty-blond brow at me, daring me to argue. I bit my tongue and the urge.
Dale shifted his gaze between the two of us several times. I don’t know if he saw what he wanted, but his mood shifted away from annoyance. “After what happened with Dink, I don’t want anyone riding out alone or unarmed.”
I wasn’t surprised at his line of thinking even though I hoped he was wrong about the need for guns. “You don’t believe the trap was part of the trouble from before.”
“No,” Dale allowed. “There had been mischief and thievery. Fences cut, feed troughs destroyed, cattle stolen. Nothing that directly harmed any of the animals. This feels different. There’s a meanness, a maliciousness out there that wasn’t here before.”
Hank was quiet, quasi-listening. Leaning back in my chair I told Dale, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then maybe it would be better if you left,” he said. He said it like someone might say, “Pass the bread.” No heat, no anger.
My chin notched up and I held Dale’s gaze. “I’m not a coward.”
“No one said you were.” He gave my sore shoulder a light squeeze. I tried to bite back a grimace. I didn’t want him to know how beat up I was.
He snatched his hand back. “Sorry. Jenna said you’d gotten skinned up. How you doing?”
Why Hank chose this moment to awaken from his half-stupor, I don’t know, but he hefted himself off the counter, a red flush on his face. “She’s—”
I stood abruptly into his line of sight and
froze him with a stare. Turning my attention back to Dale, I said, “She’s fine. And needs this job.” I forced the corners of my lips up to simulate a smile. “Really, it’s just a scratch. Isn’t that right, Hank?”
After a beat, Hank slapped his mug on the counter. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
I didn’t know why he was so mad. I hadn’t asked him to put his hand on a Bible and lie under oath. Was his anger with me, the world, or something else? His eyes turned a deep, icy blue and a shiver colonized my spine when his frigid stare stole the heat from my bones.
“Well then,” Dale said, as he turned to leave. If he’d noted Hank’s nasty mood, he didn’t comment on it. “Target practice at the range tomorrow morning after breakfast and chores.”
He nodded his goodbye and was almost at the door when Hank spoke. “How’s Jenna?”
Dale didn’t look back, but Dale’s shoulders slumped as if he’d lived all his years twice over. “Maybe you should be asking her yourself,” he said in a voice that was soft but carried nonetheless.
Hank muttered a curse and strode to his bunk, jamming his hat low on his head and snatching his coat from its hook.
“Wait up,” he grumbled after Dale.
* * * *
While we’d been out for the day, someone, Lottie probably, had rigged up a clothesline across the room between my bed and the table with an opaque blue shower curtain on rings, to give me some privacy at night I supposed. For the time being, I left it accordioned against the wall by the door.
There was no telling if Hank would be gone minutes, hours, or even all night. About thirty minutes after he left, I settled into my bunk with my pillow behind my back and leaned into the corner between the plain wood headboard and the wall.
Normally I slept in my jeans when I was on the road so I could be on the move quickly. I would have preferred that now, but my jeans scraped like burlap against my chaffed inner-thighs. Over my panties, I’d changed into a pair of men’s boxer shorts I’d found in the bottom of my saddlebags. Honestly, I’d forgotten I had them. Not even sure why I’d kept them in the first place. They’d belonged to my ex-boyfriend in Iraq and they were a stark reminder of his epic betrayal.
Usually, I functioned better when I was able to shove that memory into a grim corner of my mind reserved exclusively for the horrors that I’d witnessed. That I’d committed. Unfortunately, my memories frequently had a mind of their own and chose inopportune times to come out to play.
For those times when they refused taming, I turned to reading books. Well, a book. I didn’t have room in my bags for more than one. The Old Man and the Sea. I didn’t know why this book re-centered me, rebooting my brain to a time before there were so many things I wished to forget. But it did and I didn’t question the effect too hard.
At some point, I turned off my LED headlamp and settled under the covers, with my arm on top of the quilt and the wood stock of the lever action Winchester .30-30 Dale had brought resting beneath my hand. There were no locks on the cabin door, and with Hank still out at the main house, I didn’t want to put a chair under the doorknob.
I must have fallen asleep because the click of the door latch woke me with a start. There was no moon to light the room and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, but I had the Winchester shoved in the crook of my shoulder and a round levered into the chamber with its distinctive click-snick-snick before the door opened fully.
There was a loud thud like a sack of potatoes hitting the wood floor then a voice came from down low. “Jesus Christ, don’t shoot!”
“Hank?”
“Who else would it be?”
I heard a shuffle then the lights snapped on and I squinted into the brightness of the overhead light. By that time, I’d already un-cocked the rifle. Hank brushed the dust off his jeans.
“Sorry.” I tried hard to sound sincere. It sounded like something I should say. The truth was I would never apologize for protecting myself.
As he strode over to his peg, I appreciated how well he filled out his jeans and how his wide shoulders narrowed to his waist. I might not have been interested, but I wasn’t dead.
“You coulda killed me,” he said as I wrapped the quilt around my waist, and shuffled to the bathroom.
I stopped at the doorjamb and glanced back at him. “You weren’t ever in real danger. I’m not trigger happy and I don’t shoot unless I know what I’m aiming at.”
“Just so I’m clear on this,” he said, “you’re saying that if you ever do shoot me, it won’t be accidental. It’ll be on purpose?” One corner of his mouth tipped up so I was pretty sure he was teasing me.
“Precisely.”
“Good to know,” he said as I entered the bathroom and closed the door behind me.
When I came out a few minutes later, Hank had rinsed off the dishes and was preparing the coffee pot for the morning. He stopped and raked me up and down with an assessing gaze. “What’s with the quilt?”
I didn’t want him to know how sore I was from my short time in the saddle. A healthy ego has always been a weakness of mine. “I didn’t want to have to sleep in my jeans and I don’t own a robe.”
“So underneath that you have…” He raised a brow waiting for me to fill in the blank.
It wasn’t any of his business what I had on underneath, but we were roomies and I couldn’t scurry around in the quilt every evening. He was eventually going to see anyway so I dropped the cover. “Boxers.”
His other brow elevated.
I huffed out a breath and rolled my eyes to emphasize this was no big deal. “Over my panties. Really, it’s like I’m wearing shorts.” But it didn’t feel anything like that.
“Right. Sure,” he said, but I don’t think he believed it. The light was behind him, but I detected a flush run up his cheeks. “Probably best not to wear them around the boys, though.”
By “boys,” I assumed he meant the other hands. There was no way that was ever going to happen. It wouldn’t be happening now if the inside of my thighs didn’t burn like I’d straddled one of the campfire logs.
I dragged the quilt back over to my bed and tucked it in along the wall side. I levered the rounds out of the rifle and reloaded so the chamber would be empty. Despite what I’d told Hank, I felt better knowing that by leaving the chamber empty, I’d be giving myself longer to gather my wits before I pulled the trigger.
When I pulled the curtain and I’d settled back into bed, Hank turned out the overhead light and made his way to his bed. I could hear the fractional stutter in his step as his good leg propelled him forward followed by the injured one. I’d left the bathroom door ajar with the light on so the cabin wasn’t the inky blackness at the bottom of a well.
The curtain obscured my view of his bed, but I hadn’t pulled it far enough forward and he was visible from the waist up as he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged the white undershirt over his head. I should’ve rolled over and given him his privacy. It was the decent thing to do, but I didn’t.
His shower was so quick I would’ve taken him for a Navy man if I hadn’t known better. He came out of the bathroom with a thin towel around his waist. One hand held his crumpled up pants; the other had a tight grip on the edge of his towel as if he didn’t trust the corner to stay tucked in.
He never turned my way. I closed my eyes and only peeked once as he stepped out of view behind the table curtain. There was a thud, as if the damp towel hit the floor, and a second later the mattress bit out a squeaky complaint as he crawled into bed with a heavy sigh.
The angel on my shoulder warred with the devil on the other side. The devil was convinced Hank hadn’t had time to put anything on before he slid under the covers. The angel insisted it wasn’t polite to contemplate. I figured they were both right, but before I could let the devil run away with me, Hank broke the silence.
“What’s with the packed bags?”
>
When he’d left to check on Jenna, I’d considered what Dale had said about me leaving if I didn’t want any trouble. So I’d packed what little I had and tossed it up on the top bunk. If I decided to go, I’d be ready.
“I’m not up for any trouble,” I said, repeating what I’d told them earlier.
His soft chuckle filled the void between us. “Coulda fooled me.”
Despite myself, I smiled. I knew he was referring to my pulling the rifle on him. “Not wanting trouble is different than not being prepared.”
The truth was I could easily be gone before anyone woke up. There were aboveground gas and diesel tanks past the barn where the tractors and trailers were stored. I could push my bike up to the tanks, fill up, and be down the road before anyone was the wiser. It wouldn’t exactly be stealing. I figured the hours I’d put in today would more than cover the cost of a few gallons of gas.
But I’m not a quitter and I need this job. I didn’t want to get a couple hundred miles down the road and have to find another one.
Then there was the fact that despite St. Elmo’s fire burning between my thighs and the stress of Dink’s injury, this was the first night in many I wasn’t itching to be on the road at first light. I didn’t know what that meant, but it intrigued me enough to want to find out.
Hank’s breathing grew thick and even. I figured he’d fallen asleep. Then he said, “No one will think any less of you if you bail.”
No one. Except me.
How would I react if the situation at the ranch went all Chernobyl on us? I honestly didn’t know. I used to be calm, methodical under pressure. The more intense, the better. I hadn’t fired a gun since being discharged from the Marines. Although I didn’t think I’d need a padded room if I was around gunfire, I wasn’t convinced I could stare down the sights of my barrel and pull the trigger and kill someone if my life or someone else’s depended on it.
That made me more dangerous than the enemy.
Hank didn’t need to know all that. In fact, until now, I hadn’t allowed my brain the time it needed to process and analyze what would happen if I found myself in a dangerous situation again.